Brought to London under mysterious circumstances by his tutor, a young boy seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes when his tutor is kidnapped and he himself is threatened with the same fate.
When Andrew returns to London from boarding school, he becomes embroiled in several mysteries involving stolen jewels and the disappearance of a corpse after a brutal murder.
When Sara Wiggins and a friend disappear, Andrew and Inspector Wyatt investigate and discover that the kidnappings are part of a plot against a visiting king.
When two actresses of the London stage in the 1890s die under circumstances suspiciously like those that killed three actresses ten years before, Andrew and Inspector Peter Wyatt fear for Andrew's actress mother.